310 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



would be too heavy for convenience or quick work. The cir- 

 cular saws are used for cutting all the thin siding, pickets, and 

 laths. The largest circular saws are fifty-two inches in diam- 

 eter, leaving about twenty-four inches on each side of the axle. 

 When large logs are to be sawn with circular saws, one saw 

 is put above the other, and one cuts into the log from above, 

 and the other from below, so that they can saw a log four feet 

 in diameter. The frame-work for the circular-saw mills is 

 lighter than that necessary for the upright saAVS ; and circular- 

 saw mills are not unfrequently moved about on wagons from 

 one place to another. The circular saw is used almost exclu- 

 sively in the Sierra Nevada. In Mendocino county and at 

 Santa Cruz, the muley and circular saws are used without the 

 gang-saws. The cost of sawing lumber is about the same 

 with the circular saw as with the upright saw. The circular 

 saw is more dangerous to the sawyer, and requires more skill 

 in mechanics, so the wages of a man to manage a circular saw 

 are one hundred and fifty dollars per month, while the wages 

 of a man for an upright saw are only sixty dollars. The bark 

 of the redwood is always taken ofi" before the log is put into 

 the mill. A tree seven feet in diameter will make four thou- 

 sand feet of lumber, on an average. In Mendocino county 

 the logs are cut in the summer along the littfe streams, aud in 

 the winter they are carried down by the high water to the 

 mills, where they are caught by large booms, but as the rivers 

 are large with fierce currents, these booms are sometimes 

 broken, when millions of feet of logs are swept out to sea and 

 lost. The lumber after being sawn, is shipped to San Fran- 

 cisco in schooners, varying from one hundred and fifty to 

 three hundred tons burden. The freight is eight or nine dol- 

 lars per one thousand feet. Most of the trees convenient for 

 the lumbermen near the mills in Mendocino county, have been 

 cut away ; but about Humboldt Bay the supply will last many 

 years. In the Sierra Nevada, the circular-saw mills ordinarily 

 move from place to place, so as to have the timber near at 

 hand. In the valleys of Eel River there are hundreds of red- 



